Iets lekkers met een bite!

Making your own ice cream can be tricky, and often requires very specific equipment. That is why I’m such a big fan of semifreddo: “Semifreddo (pronounced [semiˈfredːo], Italian: half cold) is a class of semi-frozen desserts, typically ice-cream cakes, semi-frozencustards, and certain fruit tarts. It has the texture of frozen mousse because it is usually produced by uniting two equal parts of ice cream and whipped cream” (Wikipedia).

I was looking for inspiration for a dessert incorporating limoncello when I came across my peer Caroline’s Blog. She had posted a recipe for limoncello semifreddo, which to me sounded like a win-win. In fact, the dessert turned out to be just that — even though in the end I made it without the lemon sauce/syrup.

The preparation is pretty straight forward: the semifreddo consists of a cream cheese & lemon curd mixture, layered in a cake tin between lemoncello+lemon juice+sugar-soaked lady fingers. For those of you that don’t master the Dutch language, I translated the ingredients:

One week later, I started experimenting, and mixed molten chocolate and sugar with the cream (in stead of lemon curd), and soaked the lady fingers in rum (in stead of limoncello). That is all it took to create another beautiful dessert, and as I’m writing this I start getting even more variation-ideas…

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If you’re looking for a light treat that looks great on the table –but doesn’t take too much time to make– this is it. All this cake needs is a little powdered sugar on top to bring some rustic glamour to your brunch, tea or coffee.

The base is formed by a classic sponge cake [or, in Dutch, biscuit cake], which is very light & fluffy and doesn’t contain fats like butter or oil. The most important factor in the preparation is handling the egg whites and yolks separately, so you can beat in as much air as possible. As long as you keep the yolks out of the whites, you’re golden!

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy (and tripled in volume), and add the vanilla & lemon zest

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to a fluffy foam.

Gently spoon together the mixtures, add the flour and salt (through a sieve) and also gently spoon the flour into the mixture. Make sure it is mixed thoroughly, but try to work the batter as little as possible to keep in the air bubbles.

Poor the mixture in the (buttered) bundt cake pan.

Bake for about 25 minutes.

When finished, the cake should feel elastic and a toothpick should come out clean.